Systems employing numerous devices often require or otherwise benefit from the ability for these devices to communicate with one another. While each device may have its own purpose and responsibilities, they may need to transmit information to, and/or receive information from, other devices of the system. Device-to-device communication may be accomplished by wiring the devices together, and communicating via the wires. Systems today are continually moving towards wireless communication, which generally makes installation more convenient, and among other things provides greater flexibility and scalability.
Whether devices communicate wirelessly or otherwise, the communicating devices may communicate at some time that is made known to each of the communicating devices. For example, if a sending device is to send a message to a targeted receiving device(s) at a particular time or when a particular event occurs, and the targeted receiving device(s) is to monitor for the message at that particular time or when the event occurs, then the communicating devices may need to have a cooperative reference of time.
A more particular scenario is provided. One drawback to wireless communication is that information transfer is not confined to a wire, as in a direct wired system. Rather, the information is transmitted over the air, and transmissions from neighboring systems can interfere with system communications. To address this issue, wireless network systems have employed various methods of transmitting radio signals, such as frequency hopping. Frequency hopping generally refers to a modulation technique where the signal carrier is rapidly switched among many frequency channels. Each party to the communication must know the frequency hopping sequence in order to know when it is to transmit at a certain frequency in the sequence. Using the frequency hopping sequence, transmitting devices can properly address targeted devices, and receiving devices can reject information from neighboring devices that are not within their system but within their reception range. However, to know when the particular communication frequency will be active, both the transmitting and receiving devices may need to utilize a timer(s) or other timing functionality. Imprecise component tolerances in the various communication devices will lead to relative timing imprecisions in determining when the communication devices should monitor for incoming messages and/or signal outgoing message transmissions. These imprecisions can lead to communication errors.
Accordingly, there is a need in the communications industry for systems and methods for recognizing discrepancies in relative timing between communicating devices, and taking action to correct or otherwise account for such discrepancies to maintain proper communication functionality. It is also beneficial to iteratively increase the accuracy between the timing functionality of the communicating devices. The present invention fulfills these and other needs, and offers other advantages over the prior art.